We create radical new technologies to solve some of the world’s hardest problems
We create radical new
technologies to solve
some of the world’s

The Moonshot Factory
The
Moonshot

X is a diverse group of inventors and entrepreneurs who build and launch technologies that aim to improve the lives of millions, even billions, of people. Our goal: 10x impact on the world’s most intractable problems, not just 10% improvement. We approach projects that have the aspiration and riskiness of research with the speed and ambition of a startup.

Slideshow of the company timeline of X. Use tab key to navigate between slides, or mouse users can drag the range slider to navigate between slides.

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Thestoryof X

The story of X

Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin always believed in investing some of the company’s resources in hard, long-term problems. In 2010, a new division forms to work on moonshots: sci-fi sounding technologies that aim to make the world a radically better place.

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2010 Impact, not just research

This new division gets a placeholder name: X. It has a first project: self-driving cars. Is it a research center? An incubator? Is it philanthropic? No. It’s a Moonshot Factory looking 5-10 years into the future and aiming to invent new technologies and launch them into the world.

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2010 An early flurry of invention

The first batch of projects begins, including wearable computer Google Glass as well as Google Brain, which proves while at X that AI is ready to make everyday products useful. Other teams tackle indoor maps (Insight) and improving photography on mobile devices (GCam).

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2012 Hardest Things First

Audacious idea: deliver Internet from giant balloons flying freely on the stratospheric winds. A determined team sets out to prove this was impossible — the opposite of what most people do. By tackling the hardest problems one by one, they get Loon flying and cement a mindset that becomes a cornerstone of X’s culture.

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2013 A first in New Zealand

30 lighter-than-air solar-powered Loon balloons launch in the Canterbury area of New Zealand. Sheep farmer Charles Nimmo is the first person in the world to connect to balloon-powered Internet.

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2013 Moonshot Milestones

Makani’s 20kw prototype energy kite successfully achieves a special kind of flight called “crosswind flight” that the team will use to generate electricity.

2014 Moonshot Milestones

2014 Moonshot Milestones

The Self-Driving Car project develops the “Firefly” prototype, built from the ground up for fully autonomous operation.

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2015 Life sciences converge

Health professionals have long aimed to move treatment from largely reactive to proactive. A collection of new technologies developed at X, including a smart contact lens, come together around this mission and ultimately graduate from X to form Alphabet company Verily.

2015 The X In Alphabet

Alphabet forms in August 2015, separating Google’s Internet products from a set of smaller teams working on very different problems. Still an innovation lab, but now a separate division within Alphabet, Google X becomes X, and its job is to generate moonshot-based businesses for Alphabet.

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2015 No Ordinary Ride

In 2015, the Self-Driving Car team completes the world’s first fully self-driving ride on public roads in Austin TX — no steering wheel, pedals, or test drivers involved. Steve Mahan, the former CEO of the Santa Clara Valley Blind Center, is the inaugural passenger.

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2016 Introducing Waymo

The Self-Driving Car team, X’s first moonshot project, graduates to become its own Alphabet company with the mission of building a better driver and making it safe and easy for everyone to get around.

2018 Recent X Graduates

Cybersecurity needs a moonshot — lists of top global threats now include cybersecurity next to usual suspects like climate change and natural disasters. Chronicle graduates from X and becomes an Alphabet company to help companies detect and deflect cyberattacks.